Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-03-19
THE MERGED CANAL.
The Great Artificial Waterway APP
proaching Comnletinn


There are few people who have not seen
the irrigaling canal being constructed by
| G. H. Huffman and Colonel Fred Crocker,
to convey water from MERGED river to the
| locality surrounding MERGED City, that can
! comprehend the magnitude OF the work
and its perfectness in detail of construc-
| ton, even though they may be familiar
with kindred enterprises. We often read
of mammoth canals, but compared with
/ the Huffman enterprise, in point of con-
struction at least, they are as a six feet
wide ditch is to navigable river. The
main canal is somewhere about twenty-five
miles IN length, yet its cost when COM
pleted will reach into the millions. At
! the river solid rock was excavated to
depth of eight feet, and a width of sixty
! feet, forming canal the width of a re-
! specially wide street. The work at this
| point looks like a Government improve
| ment, so perfectly and completely is every
thing finished The bottom and sides
] of the canal are worked on true
| line with no unsightly projections to i'm
| pede the flow of water or impair the per-
| feet symmetry of the work Two tunnels
| are driven through ridges, each about 1000
feet in length. The first is through sand
| stone or lava and stands without uimbers
The other is driven through gravel, which
| is held in place by redwood timbers four
| teen inches square, arched overhead and
sufficiently high for a top-buggy to pass
through with plenty of room to spare, and
/ is thirty feet wide. Behind these timbers
next to the gravel, redwood planks are used
and also the whole inside, clear up over
/ the arch and across the bottom, is solid
| plank. This tunnel is the most perfect
and expensive piece of work of its kind
! ever built in this State. But the reservoir
now nearly completed, is the browning
| feature of the canal enterprise. 1t is an
| immense bank of earth fifty feet high in
! the center and one-fourth of mile in
| length, supported by solid masonry. The
| water will food one square mile and be forty
| feet deep in the middle A front view of the
reservoir is described as resembling Gov
| eminent fertilization, with its walls of ma
| sorry and solid cast-iron pipes and other
apparatus for regulating the volume of
| water on the inside, and for drawing it off
/ into the bitches when required for irriga-
! ton, in view. From this reservoir, which
! is located five and a half miles from Mer-
ced, and seventy-fiye feet higher than that
place, water will be conveyed in iron pipes
| for the use of its citizens. When the reser-
voir is full it is estimated that the pressure
will be sufficient to throw water from a
nozzle over Ell Captain Hotel, which is four
stories high. Henry Huffman is the pro-
iector of this immense water scheme, and
the man who has directed the construction
in detail from the commencement. He is
as great man as was General Grant.
None other than truly great man in his
sphere could have carried this enterprise to
completion in the manner he has done, aid
the work will stand hundreds of years
monument to the capacity and enterprise
of the neryey little man who conceived and
so successfully carried it jurisdiction
Record.